Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

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Vance G
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Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Vance G »

Plastic bags are still in stores here but the checkers have been trained to try to get you to walk out with a half dozen small items in your hands rather than automatically offer you a bag. Here the grocery stores want to give plastic and I have to ask for paper when I want some for my use at home. The way I see things, there are untold millions of pulpable trees that grow back as fast as they are used. We also have lots of oil, hundreds of years worth in fact so I see no need to rabidly conserve it either. As far as the world getting warmer. It has 28 times in the Pleistocene, warmer than now, without SUV's and heating homes. It also got mile deep ice sheets real close to your Canadian homes if not over them! They started calling this the Holocene I think because we showed up to blame things on. We just haven't changed things all that much. After all, the rain forests are only as old as the Holocene and the aboriginals in South America had them clear cut mostly less than a thousand years ago. They can't cut old growth in the area north of the Amazon without finding an old city!

Nah, much ado about nothing and a way for the ruling class to extend their power over the people is all it is.
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Allen Dick »

That about sums it up. Don't people just hate it when facts and reason are brought into a debate?

It was ever so. People are easily led, and the traditional method is to make up and convincingly state simple and definite solutions to complex or indeterminate problems.

Since proof in anything but the simplest matter is so difficult and complex, confusion results and people follow whoever seems most certain and definite no matter how preposterous the claims may be, and abdicate their judgement in other matters as well.

We see extreme examples in cults and foreign cultures. These 'oddities' are only obvious to us because they are so very different from the equally silly things we believe.

Some time back, not too long ago, serious scholars were debating how many angels could dance on the point of a pin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_ ... f_a_pin%3F

For deep thinkers still pondering this important question, the answer is here: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/pap ... ls-7-3.htm
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Countryboy
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Countryboy »

Let's not forget how important it is to recycle too!

I read once that when you factor all the energy and fuel of taking trash to the recycle pickup location, hauling it to the centralized trash place, sorting the trash, hauling the recyclables to the recycling place, and all the energy required to recycle...we are better off not recycling.

That's right. It's easier on the environment just to grow some trees and turn them into paper instead of trying to recycle.

The only recyclables that it was a benefit to recycle were metals they already pay you to recycle...things like copper and aluminum cans.
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Allen Dick »

... when you factor all the energy and fuel of taking trash to the recycle pickup location, hauling it to the centralized trash place, sorting the trash, hauling the recyclables to the recycling place, and all the energy required to recycle...we are better off not recycling... The only recyclables that it was a benefit to recycle were metals they already pay you to recycle...things like copper and aluminum cans.
Good point, but also one that does not consider all factors. I'm not disagreeing. I jut don't know, and I am quite certain that nobody really can. The question is too complex.

What would these people be doing if they were not spending time sorting and driving to the recycle location? Driving cross-country or across town anyways, planning wars (wars are the worst ecological events man can create, short of making more people).

How many car crashes happen on the way to the recycle? How much does all that physical effort work improve health -- mental and physical, or how much does the moral expectation to recycle with vague rules create guilt and anxiety and consequent medical problems? What does recycling do the health of unprotected workers overseas where the most toxic crap ends up?

How efficient is each recycle program?

How much more consumption is stimulated if recycled materials make products cheaper?

You get the idea...

One thing that astounds me is that we throw out 'tin' cans. Having been a miner, I know how much rock has to be mined, crushed, milled, floated an d refined to give just one pound of metal.

Unlimited world population growth is also an obvious concern with no solution apparent other than education, and that is a slow and uncertain cure.

I am generally in favour of recycling, but reusing and conservation in the first place are (almost) indisputably the best solutions.
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Biermann
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Biermann »

Hello All,

my personal believe is that plastic is a no brainer, simply because it does not biodegrade, regardless of the convenience. I find it in my fields, road allowance, ditches etc.

The rest about all the money and resources spend to make the so called green equipment, I agree with.

One just needs to think a little and I refuse plastic bags were and when ever possible. If Allen does not agree, fine, but I don't like them (the plastic bags). By the way, I have seen the plastic mess at the BC mainland cost line and the Vancouver Island coast line.

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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Colino »

Plastic Bags vs. Paper Bags

Plastic bag production creates less waste than paper. However, plastic bags remain with us for a long, long time.

Percentage energy savings in making plastics bags, rather than paper bags: 40
Percentage in air pollution reduction from making plastic bags: 50
Percentage of waste water reduced by making plastic bags: 94
Number of years for a plastic bag to biodegrade as litter: 20
Number of months for a paper bag to biodegrade as litter: 1
Estimated number of years for a plastic bag to biodegrade in a landfill: 1,000
Number of years for a paper bag to biodegrade in a landfill: centuries
I got the above from the link below. It seems the main advantage paper has over plastic is that plastic hangs around for a 1000 years whereas paper only lays around for centuries.
http://www.wmnorthwest.com/guidelines/p ... spaper.htm
Narcissism is easy because it's me or I, Empathy is hard because it's they or them.-Colino
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Countryboy »

One thing that astounds me is that we throw out 'tin' cans. Having been a miner, I know how much rock has to be mined, crushed, milled, floated an d refined to give just one pound of metal.
It wouldn't surprise me if in the future, we mine our landfills.
I am generally in favour of recycling, but reusing and conservation in the first place are (almost) indisputably the best solutions.
I was raised with the waste not/want not philosophy. I try to reuse things, and not be wasteful. I do recycle metals.

I'm also somewhat of a minimalist, in that I don't go hog crazy trying to see how much stuff I can accumulate, which never gets used and ultimately gets thrown away by most. My daily driver pickup truck is over 20 years old, and I still have furniture I bought used 20 years ago.
Number of years for a plastic bag to biodegrade as litter: 20
Number of months for a paper bag to biodegrade as litter: 1
Estimated number of years for a plastic bag to biodegrade in a landfill: 1,000
Number of years for a paper bag to biodegrade in a landfill: centuries
That sounds like it is better to be a litterbug than throwing stuff away in a landfill. :D Sunlight really does do a good job breaking things down.
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Allen Dick »

87.32% of facts and statistics are made up to win an argument.
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Re: Plastic bags and other ways to save the EARF

Unread post by Allen Dick »

While debates like this are fun, we can't know all the facts, and we can't know the future, and everyone places weight on each factor, fact or assumption differently, so all our best guesses are just that -- and there is plenty of room for disagreement.

Disagreement is healthy and one size will never fit all, but some try to make it so, especially if that one size fits them. The rest of us try not to take anything too seriously.
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